Build stronger client relationships with a recruitment CRM

Securing your clientele for long term relationships is extremely important to every recruitment agency. While many overlook developing this particular aspect, it’s a proven catalyst of customer retention and positive professional relationships. Alongside using a recruitment CRM, there are a few other key practices to focus on.

1- Get to know how they work and what their process is   

There is no way to deliver your absolute best work or present yourself as an expert if you don’t know the client’s work, industry, or hiring history. This is simply information to further understand what kind of client and campaign you’re engaging.

Doing your homework on the company is an essential first step to a robust client relationship, preferably as soon as you make initial contact. This way, you’re able to speak their language, establish a rapport with the point of contact, and walk into every meeting and conversation with confidence and enough research material to leave a lasting impression.

Furthermore, this is when you learn how to interact with the client, in terms of professionalism, industry-critical needs, and preferred methods of communication. Despite the importance of doing your homework, you’ll get to know the client better in a more organic approach.

2- Communicate regularly and request feedback

Regular communication does more than simply inform and update the client regarding their campaign progress. It’s an opportunity to establish a regular pattern of check-ins during which both parties analyze hurdles and discuss ways to overcome them.

You’re the expert, and your goal is to provide the client with a situation analysis as well as possible ways to move forward. Together, your task is to discuss which is most beneficial.

Beyond that, it’s important to ask for feedback, and not just at the end of the campaign as a wrap-up courtesy. Feedback should be requested often and at different stages of your process. If you want to continuously improve how your team operates with such client work, it’s vital to identify which stages that clients are apprehensive or unsure about.

At each milestone, (onboarding, submitting the first batch, etc) send your client an email and ask them how well it went from their perspective.

At the very beginning of the contract, it’s best to let your client know up front that not only do you welcome feedback but that you actively encourage and invite it. Initially, setting up short-term relationships doesn’t take much in terms of effort, but if you’re looking to engage a client for a long period of time, it’s best to make it clear from the outset that this is an open relationship that thrives on unrestricted feedback.

3- Always deliver agreed-upon expectations  

Establishing expectations is a given. As a recruitment agency, your goals are very clear. But ensuring that the details and circumstances surrounding the work are something that you can deliver in time is also important. You want to set expectations that you not only meet but exceed in every possible way.

Clients will always appreciate when their affiliate recruitment agency goes above and beyond in delivering results and improving communication. It’s all about your own timeline and capacity to deliver within whatever set period of time. Realistic expectations are the core of your client relationships and are only valuable if you’re honest about your own limitations. It’s one thing to sell yourself, it’s another to make empty or impossible promises.

4- Emphasize your role in the relationship (Expert-client)  

As the service provider in the relationship, your goal is to demonstrate enough knowledge, expertise, and results that you are considered an expert from their point of view.

Being considered an expert requires more than simply meeting requirements and producing results. It’s also about displaying industry knowledge that pertains to each role within the client’s organization, understanding their needs within their niche, and implementing that knowledge in your proposed process and timeline.

Being the client’s go-to contact for questions and information is also a very good way to solidify your position as an expert. Providing interesting insights, sharing resources you feel are relevant, and even in some cases, pushing back against the client’s unfeasible demands.

5- Give data its due with a recruitment CRM

Data has a big part to play not only in developing and maintaining the relationship with clients but also in building it from the outset. For example, during initial contact, companies that use a recruitment CRM are able to create and customize a client pipeline to document and track the journey of potential clients from a mere lead to a retainer-based partnership.

Such a tool can be customized to fit your sales process and can be used to centralize data pertaining to each potential client for your recruitment agency’s team members and decision-makers to access.

Furthermore, recruitment CRM helps you develop a superior client relationship, and categorize leads based on their value and their importance, making a recruitment CRM’s role in segmentation extremely valuable. But the most important aspect is in centralizing client data on an easy-to-use platform with an intuitive interface so that your recruiters and teammates remain in the loop.

By aggregating all of this data and creating detailed client profiles that outline their recruitment needs, their ongoing campaigns, and other information, you create a clear understanding of their value and the steps to take to convert or maintain them as well as how to approach them, how to communicate, and how to meet their expectations.

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